


We the Indelible

by obirain



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: (eventual) Pregnancy, (you all have watched anh. you know what i'm talking about.), Allusions to Major Character Death, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Force Philosophy (Star Wars), Implied Sexual Content, Philosophy, Post-Order 66 (Star Wars), Pre-Order 66 (Star Wars), Pregnancy, Series, Spice, Swearing, i'm tagging this as philosophy but please don't expect high level thoughts from me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28517325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obirain/pseuds/obirain
Summary: You’ve known Obi-Wan Kenobi since childhood. He’s your… friend? Colleague? Brother? No, he can’t be. He’s a more-than-friend, a more-than-partner; a brother would never look at you that way. You can’t even call him a soulmate, really, a separable yet compatible entity. If anything, he’s your soulmatch: sinews and fibers cut from the same cloth, two individuals in two separate bodies doomed to insoluble unity.But yours is a complicated life to lead. A loyalty to the Jedi, and a loyalty to yourself. Adherence to a Code that takes a lifetime to master. But what’s loyalty in the face of the existential horror of living? The death of the individual, the death of the beholder. Time’s vice grip on the living, time’s nonexistence, and the oblivion behind the curtain. Nothing lives forever: neither love nor grief nor simple stillness. Neither will you nor Obi-Wan nor the soul you share.Or could it?(Based on Mary Elizabeth Frye's 1932 poem, "Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep")
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Reader, Obi-Wan Kenobi/You
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	1. the house on the hill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do not stand at my grave and weep.  
> I am not there; I do not sleep.

_4 ABY_

* * *

You hadn’t missed the scent of dust. The color, the texture. The way it gets in your mouth and sticks in your teeth, the way it clings to your cuticles and your hair and your scalp. The way it coats every surface no matter how often you dust, and grinds underfoot no matter how often you sweep.

When it wasn’t too hot, you’d open the windows. Either the dust blew in with the breeze or all was still. Still, desolate, _paralyzed—_ nothing but rock and dunes of blistering sand. They’d lain there a thousand years and would for a thousand more, and they glared at you through the window into your little house on the hill.

No, you’d missed the scent of _home._ Fragrant tea like a dream of pressed flowers, spiced chai for nightly tete-a-tetes, the rare and cherished cup of caf. Savory stew on the stove and coarse bread in the oven. Nothing special. But it was hot and filling and a blissful distraction from the smell of your own sweat, of lingering bantha hair.

It was the scent of home that had sustained you. The scent of _him,_ of the little family and the little life you’d made for yourselves. But he’s been gone for years and the home empty. And now only a house—frozen in time—and the scent of dust remain.

There’s a mug on the dining table, little more than a nightstand. Hardly enough for one person, let alone two and then three. But you made it work, pulling in your elbows and knees, pressed up against each other. With the heat radiating off your limbs and the steam off your womp rat stew, and the hot air blowing through the windows on the most sweltering of nights, it could be downright infernal.

But then, in your mind’s eye: old Ben Kenobi drinking his tea and alone at the table, with plenty of room to spread his legs. Just a few degrees cooler. 

Nausea sweeps over you like a tsunami of cold oceans past. Your head swims; your knees quake; your eyes are watery and desperate for sleep. But you can’t—not yet, not at the table. So you sink onto the stool, gripping the mug with shaking hands. At its bottom long-dried tea leaves peek through the layers of dirt. They’ve lost their scent, of course; they’ve sat here for years. This was a newer habit of his… Always so neat, so orderly. Yet he’d leave out his empty cups for hours after…

_“There’s still a bit left,”_ he’d swear. _“If they can dry out a little.”_

_“It’s just a few drops. Why not just make a new cup?”  
_

_“No sense in wasting the last of a good thing.”  
_

He’d shrug and you’d shrug back. It was his tea, after all. As long as he cleaned up eventually (and he would), you couldn’t really argue. 

But now you circle the lip with your thumb and you think… Maybe you should have argued more. 

“Mum! Mum, I found Kida!”

The mug almost slips from your chill, numb fingers. Ana peaks her head out from the annex and leans against the wall, wringing her hands, watching you. 

“Mum?”

“Where was she?”

She joins you at the little table and holds out the doll. A little Mirialan girl with a feed sack for robes and black beads for tattoos, now white with dust. A low bun of black yarn, and a long, narrow braid below the ear. Dark eyes. Open eyes.

“Right on my pillow, funnily enough. And here I thought… I’d just lost her.”

She laughs a little, a hollow laugh. You try to match it but you can’t, because you _know,_ you remember, she _had_ lost her. You’d looked under beds, under laundry piles and the grass-strewn floors of the barn… you and Obi-Wan both. Ana had cried, and you’d cried with her. Had… Had he searched again, in your absence? Or had he found her on a whim in some strange, sunless corner and placed her right where his daughter should be?

Another scene in your mind’s eye. Stomach-churning.

But before the edges sharpen, Ana’s warm hand finds yours and squeezes. Hard. She still stares at the doll, her eyes wet. Blue eyes of the same shape. You catch her tears on your fingertips and pull her to your chest. She’s nineteen and as tall as you, but now she shrinks, shrinks back to the night she first heard the krayt dragon with the spoils of his hunt.

“Baby girl,” you whisper into the crown of her head while her tears wet your shirt. She’s shaking, not with sobs, but the simple trembling of a lonely soul in agony. You stand there until she stills, until your knees ache, and your wrists from gently stroking her hair. 

“I think…” Her voice is muffled in the fabric of your robes. “I think I’ll go to the Skivrens. Check on… Check on the herd.”

You smile, letting your own tears roll into your mouth, welcoming the taste of salt. “They’ll love that.”

“Do—do you want to come?”

You pull away just enough to glance around the room, and to wipe your eyes. “I think I’ll stay a few more hours. Clean up a little… _Clearly_ he never found the dust rag.”

“Or the broom, either.” Ana laughs with a nod to the sandbank by the doorframe. And you laugh, too, biting back the silence.

“You have your comlink?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll com if you need anything?”

“Course, Mum. I’ll be back in a few.”

She kisses you on the cheek, wipes her eyes, and slips out the door to your borrowed transport. You just glimpse her tuck Kida into her pocket.

You’d stitched Kida yourself, back when you first were learning to sew. You’d trained a Padawan; you’d led armies; _you could move things with your mind,_ by the Maker. But sewing that doll… Was it worth it, when you’d stitched and restitched her for the fourth and fifth time, and your fingers were swollen from the pricks of your dull needle?

Kida’s safe and sound again, and reunited with her friend. That’s worth it all, the lopsided hair and the ghosts in her eyes.

Your daughter’s footfalls fade to nothingness. She heads east, and so fades the melody of her presence humming through the Force. Only silence remains: silence, stillness, nonentity. Surrounding you, filling you as you study the empty mug, an emptiness that curls its hand over your heart and chokes you until you’re well and truly dizzy. You fix your hands around the body and _squeeze._ And _squeeze_ and _squeeze_ until your fingers shake with the force of it. But it’s not enough.

You wind back your arm and smash it on the ground.

The shatter serrates its way through the quiet while dozens of shards scrape across the floor. Your breaths come heavier, faster, like the crash lit a trail of gasoline from the soles of your feet. The flames shoot up through your heart and engulf you. But it’s not enough. The vase on the windowsill with the corpse of a funnel flower, the old water pitcher and Obi-Wan’s red-painted box of tea leaves. All of it against the ground, against the wall above the alcove, like little ceramic fireworks that splinter and wash the floor and bed sheets scarlet.

_The bed sheets._

The first sheets you’d ever bought. The last. Coarse but hardy, over two decades old; the same color as the dunes beyond your window. _You’d meant to replace them, someday, when things were better. Safer. Brighter._ Looks like Obi-Wan hadn’t gotten around to it, either. The mattress is still dented on his side, the one closest to the door, while yours looks the same as the day you left. If you lie down—just for a moment—would it feel like having him beside you again?

_No, no, no._ You can’t make two out of one.

_But why hadn’t he just replaced them? Replaced the whole mattress? He didn’t want you here. He’d sent you away. New sheets. New mattress. New home for all you cared. A new family. A new life._

But in the Maker’s blessed name, _don’t keep that dent there._

You run your hands along the hollow, catching on the sharp little slivers and the holes that had never been mended. They’re calderas and grains of sand beneath your palms as you bunch the blanket in your fist. You pull it up to your nose, breathing deep. It smells like dust. You yank it away.

But that’s not good enough. 

You rip it off the bed. The duvet, the pillows, the sheets… You pull so hard the mattress jolts up with them and sends another shower of splintered clay. You could listen to that sound forever, you think, the rustling fabric and chinking, broken pottery. Your hair sticks to your forehead and in your mouth; your eyes sting with sweat. _So what?_ You’re almost done. Just another layer of cloth. Just another sliver in your palm.

But when again you dig your hands into the bed and pull, nothing gives. The bedding lies scattered all around and behind you, pooling at your ankles. Some of the shards have caught in your robes and hang like cave crystals and stardust. You have nothing left to wreck and ruin.

And how do you feel now? Triumphant? Vindicated? Soothed? Assuaged? Master of the fire within, victor against the grave?

_You feel cold, and cold alone._

You dig your fingers into the wall above the alcove so hard your nails threaten to split, and stare at the bed. It almost stares back, stripped down to the flat hard mattress. But the dent’s still there.

_You could have stayed, if you’d insisted. He’d have agreed. If you’d indulged in your selfishness, he’d have indulged in his. He_ wanted _you here. Ana, here. Things could have been different. Had you argued. Had you asked._

Somewhere through the open window you hear a dreadful wail. _It’s the anooba,_ you think distantly, woozy and lightheaded. They’ve brought down an eopie. Separated it from its herd. Waiting for it to die.

You hear it again, but the vibrations are there: right in your chest. It’s _you._ And the wails never cease.

So you sink to your knees against the bed frame, atop your cairn of blankets and clay. You shake and you shake and you _shake_ until you’re fisting the duvet, your palms finally screaming with the shards embedded beneath the skin. _Be still. Be still. Be still. Just an illusion. Just for a moment._

But what can a duvet do? A cut of coarse cloth you should’ve scrapped a decade ago? And what will your crying do? No one can hear you. Not as you sit alone in the old, abandoned house on the hill.

No. All you can do is wait it out. Cry it out. Go to sleep. Forget the heat, and the cold, and the silence, and the sand. 

And maybe you could. But there are no sheets on the bed. 


	2. the cottage by the sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the last day of your last mission together as Padawans, you and Obi-Wan process hitherto unacknowledged emotions: about life, and about each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a thousand winds that blow;

_34 BBY_

* * *

It’s spring on Ru V and like no spring you’ve seen before. On the left, sprawling meadows lie aflood with wildflowers—yellow, purple, orange, white, all swaying in the tall grass. On the right, the glistening Eastern sea and its pale horizon. But all around the sparrows and the wrens and the bees among the flowers, the crashing of the waves, and the gale off the water that whistles in your ears, that wakes the windchimes in your cottage by the sea.

And a lovely cottage it is, though little and plain. Broken in some places following their largest earthquake in a quarter century—not nearly so damaged as the capitol where you’ve been assigned. It’s short but sturdy: atop a hill with a gentle slope, where the meads of color give way to ferns and brownish shrubs, each with hundreds of white flowers. Rocks as tall as you lead towards the narrow bay that leads towards the sea.

And you sit at the edge amidst its rhythmic bubbling, its percussive melody. It glints in the morning light just as it glinted under the moon and the stars just after. The night was cold and so is the dawn. Cold but fresh the breeze that tugs at your braid, and cold the water against your bare feet. But the sun is climbing and with it a bluer horizon and a bluer sea, and new warmth that mingles with the salt and sinks into your skin. 

Your eyelids grow heavy in the growing heat. You’ve kept them peeled so long: memorizing each and every cloud with its gold and silver lining, every star to fade away, every short-lived role of the sea. Might you not let your eyes close? Let the wind wage war on gravity and blow you away to the daffodils beyond the hill. The water on the sand echoes loud in your ears. Behind you a wren is singing.

But another breeze sighs in your heart, in the Force, in your bones. Behind your closed lids, a breath off the sea and a whiff of saltwater. Or perhaps the scent of juniper and spiced tea, or perhaps even the low, sustained note on the cello. Your fists clench; your heart begins to race. New warmth washes over you: stronger than the sun, gentler than the moon. But you breathe deep and nudge yourself back into your sleepy meditation, levelling your energy in the Force. 

“You remember I can feel you, yes? You’re not smooth— _Aigh!”_

 _It’s cold. It’s cold._ You’ve been submerged in a bucket of ice. Or maybe shot; who’s to say?—you sputter and cough and wipe the saltwater out of your eyes. 

_“Obi-Wan—!”_ You’re blind, just a little, but there’s no mistaking the laughter behind you.

“Obi-Wan, I am _one_ splash in the face away from disavowing you forever.”

“This is what happens when you sit too close to the water, _my dear,”_ he laughs. You hurl a handful of sand at his robes. “Hey!”

“I can’t believe you. Abusing me like this. All for your own satisfaction, too. That’s not very Jedi-Way of you, now, is it?”

“I do like a dramatic entrance.” Obi-Wan nudges your arm with his; a thrill shoots through you like lightning as he flashes you that old, good-natured smile. “But I’ve been looking for you. You were gone when I went to bed and gone when I woke up. You’ve not been out here all night, have you?”

“Not... _all_ of it; I did come back for a couple of hours. It’s our last day—last night, rather. The sky’s different wherever we go... I wanted to memorize it.

“See there?” You point to a cliff a way’s up the coast with a single pear tree in bloom. “That’s where the Guardian rises, or it _would_ be the Guardian on Coruscant. Here it’s the Sage, and this time of year he holds the moon in his hands.”

“It’s very important to the locals,” Obi-Wan cuts in. “They call it Hmin d’Rukke, the Hands of Fortune. Were it not for the quake, every home would be decorated in blue and white about now.”

“Did you see it?”

“Myself? Unfortunately not, though I’ve read enough about it. Perhaps we’ll return, someday. Hopefully not as the clean-up crew.”

“I hope so, too. It was... beautiful.”

He pauses; you can feel his eyes on you. “But you’re troubled.”

You glance at him from the corner of your eye, trying not to linger too much on his face. “Troubled... maybe... It’s fearsome, isn’t it? That we could come back every day for another thousand years, and never see the same sky.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“If not... _fearsome..._ perhaps... overwhelming. That no moment can ever be repeated or relived. I saw the Sage last night, with the moon in his hands. And I’ll never see him in the same way ever again. And _this_ moment, this one _right now—_ we’ll never get this again, not even in a memory. It’s just... _gone,_ Obi. That’s—that’s at least a little bit horrifying, isn’t it?”

“That’s how time works, my friend. Although I suppose you’d like to stop that, too?”

He smiles at you; you can’t quite match him. “Maybe I would. But... _come on._ Don’t you ever just want to _sit_ and _see_ and _be—_ and behold?”

“Perhaps, except that you can’t ‘sit and see and be’ without time. You need motion for all that, and for motion you need—”

 _“Time._ I know.”

Obi-Wan waits for you to continue and sighs when you don’t. “To change is the way of the living; we all have to learn to let go. Fears, attachments, simple moments, as you’re saying... Although... I can see how that might be disappointing for you.”

Disappointing? Heat blooms in your chest, stronger than the sun, harsher than blaster fire. _Disappointing,_ to seek the futile and crave the paradox. To turn the night to day, to break the chains of gravity. Disappointing, to want what you can never have. And you know! you want to scream. _I know it’s impossible. I know it’s in vain. I know, I know, I know!—_

“Thank you,” you say quietly. “It’s... the price of living, _I know.”_

“Then what?”

In the silence, in the waiting, you feel his energy against your hand. A stream of clear water curling around your wrist, or perhaps the mist off the sea. He’s trying his best, you think. Trying to be gentle, even as you dig your fingers into the sand. Every moment the Force threatens to give you away. So you reign it in again, inch by inch by inch.

“Then... an illusion, if not the real thing,” you finally settle. “To do your daily work and then to _stop_ and look at an ocean that seems itself so unchanging. None of this Jedi business.”

“‘This Jedi business’?”

You wince at the edge in his voice. But it’s not enough to quench the fire within. The wind picks up again and whistles in your ears; you can barely hear yourself.

 _“Yes, this Jedi business._ What exactly do you think the rest of our lives are gonna be, Obi-Wan? We might have been born without the Force, or beyond the reach of the Order. We might have been farmers, fishermen, librarians—we might have lived here! And celebrated Hmin d’Rukke, and we’d suffer! We’d have hardship, plenty of it! But we wouldn’t feel every single change in the Force every minute of the day.

“But as it is...” you say with a wry smile, “we’re Guardians. We’re Consulars; we’re _keepers of the peace._ Subject to every flux, every... every injustice and loss and joy and—and _unfinished work_ forever, and responsible for it. From the day we’re Knighted to the day we die. That’s a whole lifetime of nothing but change and jobs half-done. And what we _can_ fix, what does that matter? When all of it’s gonna pass away, anyway?”

Your heart pounds; beads of sweat cling to your brow. Your very muscles shake from the strain. Out of breath, out of words and momentum like the wave that crests and breaks on the shore. The wind dies down, fading, fading until only silence remains.

“... That does put a damper on our future, I will admit,” Obi-Wan says at last. His energy curls around your wrist again and against the curve of your shoulder. You shudder, and _almost_ reach back. _Stars,_ you want to—even if you don’t. “But I think you’re leaving out all the good bits... We might not see the same sky again, but we’ll see the sky nonetheless. ‘Jedi business’ and all.”

 _“We..._ You mean, together.”

“Of course.”

“And what kind of sky will that be?”

“Whatever sky you wish, I suppose.”

You laugh, praying to the Maker that it distracts from the tears welling in your eyes. Not for him. Just for you. 

“But that’s not exactly true, is it?”

He turns toward you with a heavy sigh.

You feel so _close_ to him right now, although neither of you have moved an inch. His eyes hold yours steady as the light from the sun. You wish they would swallow you whole—wholly into him, or wholly into nothingness. 

“I don’t... want you to misunderstand me. I _do_ understand, I promise. What it is to want something... impossible.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” you whisper. “Not quite impossible.”

“Not quite,” he agrees. “But impossible enough. We’ve made our commitments.”

You both lapse into silence as you turn away, dabbing your tears before they fall. The sun’s climbed high; the light off the water is near unbearable. But you stare at it all the same. Shifting and glinting on every ripple on the horizon. Appearing and disappearing, like windchimes fading on the breeze. What would it be like, you wonder? To give in? To look futility in the eye and deny it even so. To indulge in your delusions, to stuff entropy into a box, wage war on gravity. Just for a moment. That would be enough.

_Wouldn’t it?_

“And I suppose,” you say softly, “that we have the rest of our lives. To want something... a little more attainable.”

Obi-Wan smiles beside you. Were it not for the dip in the Force, you’d almost believe him. “Perhaps we can start with our Monday meditations.”

“I’m not going back to the Temple, Obi-Wan.”

The music falters as the wind whistles. He frowns. “Where, then?”

“We’ve been assigned to Lethe as aides. Master Raika says I might finish my training there.”

“That—that could be years. How long have you known about this?”

“Last week.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me?”

“We were working. I was watching. You were reading.”

He squeezes his temples and runs a hand down his face. “I’d thought,” he says finally, “that we might have finished our training together.”

“Oh, come on. You were always going to graduate before I did. By a considerable margin, too.”

“That’s—I meant—” He shakes his head, a bit too long, a bit too feverishly. “At least you’d be there with me.”

“To change is the way of the living,” you nudge him gently. Obi-Wan looks away.

“Then we’ll keep in touch... Monday meditations over holo, perhaps.”

You pause. Again you feel his energy against your hand. But the water is cold. 

“I don’t think I will, Obi.”

He swivels back to you, blinking. “And why not?”

“I need... _time,_ Obi-Wan. Time to... to learn to want what’s possible. If you understand.”

His eyes search yours once more. Wider, more desperate. He hangs his head—just for a moment, almost imperceptibly—and you feel him tracing the curve of your wrist. Not the Force. Him. Skin against skin. Fresh tears well; you don’t bother biting them back. 

“I do,” he breathes. “... When should I expect to say goodbye?”

You think for a moment. “Perhaps now’s as good a time as any.”

“Perhaps.”

You get to your feet and help Obi-Wan to his. He holds both your hands tightly as his eyes rake down your face—you know that kind of look. The kind that tries to memorize every detail: every ripple on the sea, every star in the sky. Every freckle, every highlight, every wayward strand of hair. You’ve tried, you want to tell him. _And it’s no use._

“Then... goodbye. My friend.”

You look up at him, into eyes bluer than the sky beyond. At the bridge of his nose, at the curve of his lips. 

“Can I?” you whisper. “Just... just for once—”

You expect him to refuse. It’s not appropriate, he’ll say. Jedi business, and all that. But he pauses, glancing up at the house on the hill, and lowers his head to capture your lips with his.

Every part of you blossoms into warmth, as if it’s not just a thrill but true electricity, liquid light in your veins. You’ve not known what to expect, really, no matter how often you’ve imagined it as you lay alone in the dark. And now you’re _here,_ and he’s _here,_ holding your hands even tighter, pulling them against his chest, wrapping his fingers more tightly around yours. He holds you and moves against you with reserve but a certain confidence and maturity; it occurs to you that he’s got a modicum of experience.

You don’t let yourself dwell on it, but it sits in your chest like a block of ice even so, even as your cheeks burn with your own unrefined clumsiness 

And when he pulls away you’ve not known what to expect, either. You imagined you’d feel elated, fulfilled, somehow more whole and more human than before. But all that’s there is the same hollow in your chest through which the ocean breeze and scent of juniper blow. Perhaps even wider and emptier than before, even as he squeezes your hands like a vice.

“Goodbye.” You leave one last kiss on his cheek, lingering at the corner of his mouth. “Friend.”

You gently tug your hands from his with a final sweep of your thumbs over his knuckles, and at last you let your energy blow against his shoulders. What does it sound like to him, you wonder? Or does it sound like anything at all? Does he have a hollow in his heart just like you do? If he does, he doesn’t show it; he doesn’t move an inch. You can’t tell if he’s frozen or just waiting for you to release him. So you do.

Trudging back up the hill among the ferns and brambles and wildflowers, picking your way through the rocks with bare feet, up to the doorstep of the cottage by the sea. It’s time to put your shoes on. To finish packing. To bid farewell to Master Jinn, to leave at last with Ru V at your back. But at the door you turn, just for a moment, and behold him at the bottom of the hill. He stands still as a statue overlooking the waves. You hear—only just—the cellist’s last refrain against the wind. And you cross the threshold and close the door, to the sound of the warbling wren and the windchimes singing.


End file.
